Efficient production of polymer-grade propylene from the propane/ propylene binary mixture using Cu-MOF-74 framework

We employ the Cu-MOF-74 framework for the separation of a propane/propylene mixed stream. Performing single and binary component breakthrough experiments demonstrates that this framework has a greater capacity and affinity for propylene relative to propane. A system model is implemented in Aspen Adsorption (TM) and validated against experimental data. Implementation of this model for the case of industrially relevant propane/ propylene separations shows that propylene can be efficiently purified into a polymer-grade level quality using the Cu-MOF-74 framework as an adsorbent. Moreover, reviewing key performance indices shows that the Cu-MOF-74 framework is more efficient for propane/propylene separation than the state-of-the-art commercial adsorbent, i.e., zeolite 13X. Using zeolite 13X as the adsorbent, the recovery and productivity for propylene product are 1.00 mol.kg(-1 )h(-)(1) and 74.63%, respectively; the corresponding values for Cu-MOF-74 are 2.36 mol. kg(-1) h(-1) and 78.68%, respectively. This highlights the importance of applying novel frameworks for challenging industrial separation applications.